Town of Cat Spring
Schlopata, Austin County, Texas
Marker Inscription
A pioneer German settlement founded in 1832 by members of the Amsler, Kleberg and Von Roeder families.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Cat Spring was founded in 1832 by members of the Amsler, Kleberg, and Von Roeder families, among the earliest German immigrants to settle in what was then Mexican Texas. Their arrival marked the beginning of a wave of German migration that would leave a lasting imprint on the region. The community became a nucleus of German culture in Austin County.
Why it matters
Cat Spring stands at the headwaters of German immigration to Texas, a movement that shaped the language, farming, and civic life of the state's central hill country and coastal plains.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Amsler family
- · Kleberg family
- · Von Roeder family
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Early History of Bellville Methodist Church
Bellville, TX
The roots of Bellville Methodist Church reach back to 1822, when Thomas B. Bell arrived among Stephen F. Austin's Old Three Hundred and donated fifty acres for a church and camp meetings between Piney and Caney Creeks. Frontier revivals took hold there, and at an 1835 gathering the future Alamo hero William Barret Travis spoke and pledged to help bring Methodist preachers to Texas. After decades of camp-meeting worship, proceeds from the land's sale built a German Methodist Episcopal church in Bellville in 1882, and a new sanctuary rose on this site in 1886.
Star Hill Cemetery
Industry, TX
Bryan Daughtrey, a veteran of the War of 1812, came to Texas in 1822 as part of Stephen F. Austin's Second Colony and settled here in present Austin County. When his wife Anna died in 1847 he buried her on this spot, beginning a cemetery later used by the German Sternenberg family who bought the land. The community, its burial ground, and a school that ran until 1928 all took the name Star Hill—the English translation of Sternenberg—and descendants of those pioneer families still tend the graves.
Mentz-Bernardo Community
Columbus, TX
Beginning in the 1830s, German immigrants seeking land beyond the formal colonization schemes filtered into this stretch of the Colorado River country near Cat Spring. Two focal points grew up: Mentz, whose predominantly Roman Catholic settlers named it for their homeland and founded St. Roch parish by 1858, and Bernardo, a community on the prairie route from Houston to the interior. Once distinct, the two settlements merged into a shared German-flavored rural life still carried on by descendants.
Industry Pilgrims Rest Cemetery
Industry, TX
When Friedrich Ernst and Charles Fortran settled at the western edge of Stephen F. Austin's colony in 1831, the town of Industry became the first permanent German settlement in Texas. Travelers on the Gotier Trace passed through on their way west, and many stayed; the cemetery, formally deeded in 1873 by Ernst's daughter, held graves long before that, including Louise Ernst Stoehr, remembered on her tombstone as "the first German settler in Texas." German pioneers, Austin colonists, and Republic of Texas soldiers rest here together.